Road to success
Elon Musk's life was a roller coaster of success, failure, inspiration, and near disaster. On this page, we'll explore the history behind his success, starting from his childhood.
Childhood
Elon Musk was born in South Africa on June 28, 1971. His mother was a supermodel, and his father was a wealthy engineer. They divorced when he was 10. Elon daydreamed so much as a child that his parents ordered a hearing test for him. He developed a major interest in computers and even sold he coded himself called Blastar, at the age of 12. Up to high school, Elon was often bullied because of his nerdy personality.
First Startups
Elon Musk was in university when the internet boom hit. He dropped out of university immediately to found a company with his brother called Zip2. The company was an online city guide, which proved to be a new useful tool at the time. 4 years after launch, Elon sold Zip2 and founded a new company, X.com, which eventually led to what we know as Paypal today. In 2002, Elon sold Paypal to eBay and earned his first billion from the sale.
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Success
Elon founded his two most successful companies, SpaceX and Tesla in 2002 and 2003. SpaceX almost died because of how many failed launches they had, and Elon was kicked off as Tesla chairman at one point because of how bad the company was doing. At one point, Elon had to make the decision to either pour all his money into one company or split his money between both. He chose to split, and fortunately, SpaceX and Tesla both came through to what we know as today. Since then, Elon had founded several more companies benefiting the world, which we will explore on the next page.